Primary Navigation

Personal/Impersonal Expectations

Question: In speaking of No Expectation What does that look like ... seeing that there is no separate entity yet in this plane where there is body activity...

Message 1 of 1
, Jul 11, 2009

0 Attachment

Question: In speaking of No
Expectation What does that look like ... seeing that there is no
separate entity yet in this plane where there is body activity... Do we
not expect to get paid when going to work, or the car to stop when I
put on the brakes, to be satisfied of hunger when I eat etc.

Answer:

Dear Gary,

There is a distinction to be made between personal and impersonal
expectation. In the case of personal expectation, the belief in
separate personal entities is involved, and their happiness is at
stake: you expect something, good or bad, for yourself as a separate
person or from others as separate persons. In the case of impersonal
expectation, nobody is involved: "If an object is released from a
certain height on the surface of the earth, it will fall to the ground"
is an impersonal expectation.This distinction is sometimes not obvious.
Example:

"I expect my hunger to disappear if I eat enough" is an impersonal
expectation, "I" refers in that case to the body, not to consciousness.

"I expect to be happy if I eat enough" is a personal expectation. The
second "I" refers to the body, the first "I" to consciousness. You can
see, ignorance is in this case the result of a lack of discrimination
between the true self, consciousness, and an object, the body.

This second type of expectation disappears automatically when the
belief in a separate consciousness, on which it depends, disappears.
The term "no expectation" used by some sages refers to that
disappearance.

My teacher, Jean Klein, once told me: "Don't expect anything (for
yourself or from others) and you will get everything". These words had
a great impact on me, and their truth has kept revealing itself since.

Most affectionately,

Francis

- Francis Lucille

-------------

There is a distinction
to be made
between personal and impersonal expectation.

Is there one?

For whom is that distinction?

In the case of personal
expectation, the belief in separate personal entities is involved, and
their happiness is at stake: you expect something, good or bad, for
yourself as a separate person or from others as separate persons. In
the case of impersonal expectation, nobody is involved:

Then whose
expectation is involved?

Expectation is the hope that given more than one possible
outcomes..........a preferred one..... should come to occur.

It is not that there is a person expecting this or that....

.....but that
the very sense of preference which is synonymous with the sense of
expectation...

..... is the sense of the persona.

Whether the expectation is for enlightenment or a bottle of dark
Barcadi Rum......to quench a thirst.

"If an object
is released from a certain height on the surface of the earth, it will
fall to the ground" is an impersonal expectation.

Nope.

Given the model under question, aka the surface of the
earth.......there are no multiple possibilities in the outcome of
an
object in free fall, released from a height.

Hence it is not an issue of a personal versus impersonal expectation
but
that no expectation can be built.

This distinction is
sometimes not obvious. Example:

"I expect my hunger to disappear if I eat enough" is an impersonal
expectation, "I" refers in that case to the body, not to consciousness.

The body
never has any expectation.

Yes, being a reactive object, it responds to impacting
stimuli.....whether internally generated or to external arrivals.

"Don't expect anything (for yourself or from others) and you will get
everything"

Thus a
technique to satisfy the expectation to get everything.

Seeing the transient nature of the temporary....

......the chase for the
timeless.

Expectation, whether classified as personal or impersonal.......is
essentially a thought
(the classification being more
thoughts)...

.....essentially a thought about a construct.........the construct
itself being
more thought-play.